Library News: Feb '25

Videos for Courses

The library now supports licensing streaming video for course use.  We work closely with Empire Online in the course review process and will assist in that capacity.  However, if you're considering using a video for class, please reach out to librarian@sunyempire.edu to see if we can license it.  The library recently added title purchasing from Swank, so we have access to license a much wider range of films.

To see an example of Swank, visit our licensed version of The Breakfast Club (assigned in multiple courses).  Swank is in addition to our Kanopy individual film licensing services and major video package subscriptions, Academic Video Online and Films on Demand. 

The Library Has NY Times and Chronicle of Higher Education Site Licenses 

Are you getting new year renewal reminders for your personal NY Times account or Chronicle of Higher Education account?  Use the SUNY Empire site licenses for free instead.  Any student, faculty, staff, or affiliate of SUNY Empire can use our site licenses, and you can even transfer your personal account to our site license.  Please email librarian@sunyempire.edu if you have questions or need help. 

Scopus AI 

At the request of faculty looking for a quality research search tool similar to Web of Science, the library added Elsevier’s Scopus earlier this year.  Recently, the library added Scopus AI, which will assist researchers with analyzing research topics, finding foundational articles and identifying emerging areas ripe for publication. 

Scopus AI is among other tools such as our site license for Statista that has AI integration allowing students, faculty, and staff to interact with research tools using natural language processing and simple prompting to help users access and scan research.  As many library research tools will have AI integration in the coming year, the library will work collaboratively with the AI Research Working Group to develop guidelines and a framework for review and adoption of AI features in library tools. 

Statista's Research AI

The library recently added a site license for Statista, that provides access to reports, market analysis, data, and data visualizations.  Statista also has a Research AI assistant that students and faculty can use to interact with the resource using natural language. 

Resource Requests 

If you would like the library to license an ebook, subscribe to a journal, or review a resource for addition, please let us know by submitting the Library Resource Acquisition Request Form. 

Affordability Initiative 

For Fall 2024, an impressive 67.56% of all courses at Empire State University were made affordable—with textbooks licensed by the library or through Open Educational Resources (OER)--at no cost to students. For Fall 2024 alone, this initiative saved our students a total of $1.2 Million in textbook costs. 

The library partners with the Bookstore and Empire Online to help faculty find free alternatives during course revisions and developments and proactively reviews bookstore adoptions submitted by faculty.  See the 800 textbooks already licensed for Spring 2025 at our course reserves page. 

Open Access Publishing Fee Support 

Do processing fees make Open Access publishing seem out of reach? Thanks to a generous Foundation Grant, our Pilot Program for Open Access Publishing Fee Support offers $13,000 in funding to assist faculty and staff with article processing charges (APCs). 

How it works: 

• 6 smaller awards of $500 are available for faculty with partial funding through UUP IDA grants. 
• 3–5 larger awards of $2,000–$3,000 will be granted based on need, research significance, and alignment with institutional goals. 
• More information and application. 

This initiative is in addition to the library’s transformative agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) that provides free APCs for ACM journals and publications and a 10% discount on Elsevier OA charges.  Transformative agreements provide affiliated faculty with free open access publishing plus access to scholarly publications covered in the agreement.  The library is also finalizing a transformative agreement with Cambridge University Press that should be active within the next few months. 

Professional Development: AI and Other Skill Building with Coursera 

The library is pleased to announce Coursera access for SUNY Empire faculty and staff, supporting professional development related to AI. 

What’s included? 

• Customized Learning Tracks: Beginner and intermediate tracks tailored to your needs. 
• Full Coursera Catalog Access: Explore specialized courses in generative AI and beyond. 
• Enroll in as many classes as you’d like—as long as you can finish them in 2 months! 

Interested faculty and staff can email library@sunyempire.edu with questions or submit the Coursera Request Form to get access. For more information, visit the Coursera library guide.  Coursera access will be provided for 2 months due to limitations on the number of seats available.  If there are still seats free after 2 months, your access will be renewed.

Library Workshops Now Asynchronous

Conversion of the library workshops for students--away from live sessions to fully self-paced online content and quiz--is now complete. Please consider pointing students to one or more of these learning opportunities as needed. Each accompanying quiz can either be added directly to a Brightspace course as an assignment (this is the preferred method as it keeps graded content in the course and attached to the grade book; the library can work with you to do this) or students can be instructed to send the Certificate of Completion document (contains date, name of student, and grade) to their instructor's Empire email address. Send an email to librarian@sunyempire.edu with any questions or requests on this.

Updated Information Literacy General Education Requirement

As departments or schools are tasked with identifying courses that contribute to the updated Information Literacy General Education requirement, the library is here to assist in any way we can. We can work with you identify support materials that teach or reinforce key concepts and skills in these areas, or we can collaborate to tweak or create assignments so they better align with the gen ed. Send an email to librarian@sunyempire.edu with any questions or requests on this.

EMPower 2025 Event

The librarians have a handful of proposals in for the virtual EMPower 2025 Event. We hope you can join us for one or more sessions to learn about library tools and research strategies.

Survey Feedback

Multiple surveys were activated over the last year for the purpose of gathering feedback from faculty, students, and staff on various library reference services. These include reference services provided via email, live chat, and our chatbot, Howie. We are currently reviewing survey ratings and responses to assess whether interventions deployed in response to early feedback have been effective and to determine if any changes to existing services are warranted.

Library Advisory Board

The board will be meeting in the coming weeks. If there are library programs, services, or initiatives you would like us to present to the board, please email sara.hull@sunyempire.edu with those ideas.

AI
We updated the University's Understanding Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) at SUNY Empire website, and tested various AI image generating platforms. We are also testing the AI Research Assistant in the library's OneSearch platform and gathering information on other AI tools available--or soon to be available--from other library databases and resources. 

Brightspace

We have been working in collaboration with Empire Online to repair and improve links to library resources in Brightspace courses. We also successfully implemented the LibGuides LTI tool in Empire's instance of Brightspace which allows for direct embedding of library guide content, database listings, tutorials, and other resources directly in courses.

Other Library Resources and Services

We participated in a global trial with ExLibris to test full ebook lending and borrowing, collaborating with ExLibris and libraries across the world. Currently, we are only able to obtain ebook chapters via interlibrary loan, but hope to able to offer full ebook lending in the near future. Stay tuned!

We are collaborating with SUNY Library Support and SUNY Empire ITS to establish a library account registration option which could help prevent library login delays at the start of each term. If your students report difficulty logging in to the library's subscription resources, please ask them to email librarian@sunyempire.edu.

We are gathering information and testing the library's databases for Spanish language view options to support the Spanish BBA program. If you have questions about these features, please email librarian@sunyempire.edu.